Extraordinary Measures (2010)

One of my all time favorites.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

"Extraordinary Measures" is a modern hero story about medical research to fight a rare disease. Only, the big heroes in this story aren't the doctors, scientists or researchers. Some ultimately have a hand in it, of course, but the heroes in this story are a mom and dad who want to save their children. The basis for the film is a 2009 book by Geeta Arnand, a Pulitzer Prize author and journalist who writes for the Wall Street Journal. "The Cure" is subtitled, "How a Father Raised $100 Million and Bucked the Medical Establishment in a Quest to Save His Children." It's about the efforts of John Crowley and his wife, Aileen, who fought to get the research done to develop a cure for Pompe's disease. Two of their three children had the rare disease. In the movie, John Crowley digs to find research on the disease. He travels from Oregon to Nebraska to meet the leading researcher in the field. He finds and challenges venture capitalists, and prods pharmaceutical interests. He sacrifices everything in the hope of finding a medicine that will keep his children alive beyond age nine. The movie screenplay creates a fictional character, Dr. Stonehill, who is a leading researcher on the disease. Sources say his character is based on one or two real life people who were involved in the story. Harrison Ford plays Dr. Stonehill. In a bonus documentary on the DVD of the movie, producer Michael Shamberg talks about Ford's role. Shamberg says, "He's rewritten the scientific language so it's completely accurate, and he will sound to real scientists like a real scientist. That's how methodical and serious an actor he is."The acting is excellent by all of the cast in this film. Three actors give superb performances. Brendan Fraser plays John Crowley, Keri Russell plays Aileen Crowley, and Meredith Droeger plays their daughter, Megan. At times, one wonders at John Crowley's restraint when faced with one roadblock after another. Fraser emotes the frustrations and angst yet keeps his calm and goes off to tackle the new problem. It's almost unbelievable that he wouldn't lose his cool at times. On the other hand, it's a mark of his love for his family and dogged determination to work within the system to get results to save the lives of his children.This film reminds one of "Lorenzo's Oil" of 1992. Except that, in this case, the disease has handicapped the children, so that the parents have more restraints and pressures. "Lorenzo's Oil" received widespread acclaim from critics, and received two Academy Awards nominations. However, it didn't even recover one-third of its $30 million budget in the U.S. box office. Nearly two decades later, "Extraordinary Measures" fared somewhat the same - even a little worse. Some top critics praised it but the larger media-dominated field rated the film low. It received no Oscar nominations. Yet, the lead performances were as good or better than those that were nominated for 2010 awards. It recovered just over a third of its $31 million budget in its U.S. box office, and only half in its worldwide gross. One wonders at the low appeal of such films with audiences since the late 20th century. Are people no longer interested in these types of uplifting, positive stories? Are people no longer moved by struggles to overcome challenges for life? Is society moving away from life, hope, sacrifice, work and love? Let's hope not. Let's hope that the obvious shift in film output from Hollywood is not a harbinger of society today - or that of the near future.Here's a favorite line from the movie. John Crowley has told a business friend of his plan to quit his job to work full time to try to find a cure for his kids. The friend tries to talk him out of it. Crowley says, "Hey, you're right! This is crazy. I'm chasing the wind. But I can't just sit around and wait for my kids to die."

A heartwarming film that has no crashes or special effects and NO foul language. For that alone, this movie worth watching. Good performances by the three leads, especially Harrison Ford who is now a character actor as opposed to his strong leading man roles. Yes, everyone ages and one can't young and handsome forever.What would have made this a little more realistic is if one or both of the parents had siblings, Mothers, Fathers or other relatives involved. They wee certainly young enough to have living parents. For sure the grandparents would have been involved in this situation and had visited often or even gone to the Hospital for the initial treatment.

This movie pretends to be a true story of how a couple with children dying of a certain disease try to help scientists to find a cure for their children.The movie gives every impression of being based on real facts. However in the film a major player is a research scientist,one Dr Stonehill, played by Harrison Ford. No such person did or does exist and the whole character and scenario is a total fabrication. Roger Ebert when reviewing the movie says:"Dr. Robert Stonehill doesn't exist in real life. The Pompe cure was developed by Dr. Yuan-Tsong Chen and his colleagues while he was at Duke University. He is now director of the Institute of Biomedical Science in Taiwan. Harrison Ford, as this film's executive producer, perhaps saw Stonehill as a plum role for himself; a rewrite was necessary because he couldn't very well play Dr. Chen. The real Chen, a Taiwan University graduate, worked his way up at Duke from a residency to professor and chief of medical genetics at the Duke University Medical Center. He has been mentioned as a Nobel candidate."It a total disgrace that the film makers produce a movie purporting to be a true account, when in reality a large slice of the film is pure invention to suit the executive producer.I sat through the whole movie and might of given 6/10, but when I discovered the unforgivable deception outlined above I took off 5 points.Unbelievable the depths of cheating the film industry will stoop to:1/10.

This movie is no Lorenzo's Oil. I can see why it failed at the box office. It's the story of a determined fathter (a very puffy looking Brendan Fraser) looking for a cure for a rare disease that afflicts 2 of his kids. He approaches a scientist played by Harrison Ford to help him.The screenplay is not well written. The enzyme research and corporate dealings are kind of boring. In the end it just seemed to be a lot of obstacles and a rather hasty conclusion.Harrison Ford overacts terribly. He isn't convincing as a scientist he is too working man looking. He shouts too much in many scenes that don't warrant such outbursts. Time to retire Harrison.Overall not worth watching because of bad acting and a poorly written script.